As is generally known, a consistency group (CG) serves to group all system, middleware, and application volumes that are to be managed as a consistent entity. Among other settings, this can be of relevance in a hybrid cloud, which itself involves consolidation and management of a public cloud, private cloud and dedicated hardware. As is generally known, hypervisors can serve in the provision of consistency groups for VMs (virtual machines). It is also known that storage controllers can serve in the provision of block-level consistency groups.
However, several problems and shortcomings have been noted conventionally. Physical boundaries are encountered because hypervisors normally provide CGs solely for VMs within a privately managed virtualized environment, while the scope of a storage controller's CG is normally limited to hosts having attached storage (e.g., logical unit numbers or LUNs) provisioned by one or more controllers. Logical boundaries are usually encountered because CGs are conventionally facilitated only within a data center, a public cloud or a private cloud. Further, homogeneity emerges as a problem because it is difficult to provide CGs for applications spanning across VMs and physical machines.